Trial of Gilles De Rais

by George Bataille

  This commemoration of the liberation apparently lasted several days. On this occasion, Gilles let the gold flow. He was spending as one drinks liquor, to become giddy; the principle of the feast was, as it still is, the interminable procession that followed the first year the English departed, but the procession was set off with “mystery plays” presented along the way. In these mysteries, one represented episodes of the battle of 1429. We know that, this year, a performance took place at the moment when the procession reached the boulevard of the bridge: it had to do with taking the Tourelles, the fortress that commanded the bridge over the Loire. The City participated in the costs, but — as the municipal reports that we possess show — only assumed a portion of them. Rais had the mysteries performed quite often; he is said to have worked his ruin in this way. He multiplied the purchases of new and magnificent costumes, not wanting them to be used twice; it was possible for him to have the spectators served with wine, hippocras, and delicacies. We know moreover that four years later in 1439, in another performance of this same assault on the Tourelles, a standard and a banner came from him. We cannot doubt that, in this same year when he spent 80,000 crowns, an important part of this fortune went toward the considerable costs of these feasts.

  But when he returned to Brittany, his coffers were empty.

  His coffers were empty, and his indignant relatives had just obtained royal letters of prohibition against him. At Angers, Tours, Orléans, Champtocé, Pouzauges, and Tiffauges, this prohibition was blaringly announced. He could not have managed this delirium without selling a part of his property, but from then on nobody, in the realm at least, could enter into a contract with him.

  It is probable that Gilles de Rais was then not as completely ruined as it might seem. But in addition to his moral disgrace, this prohibition made another disgrace apparent to everyone: his financial disgrace — which must have also depressed him.

  A striking character trait ultimately emerges from these great expenditures at Orléans: that which must have sovereignly counted double for Gilles de Rais was to make of his life, and of himself, a spectacular blaze! With this purpose he had a sense of theater. In 1435 he was all washed up. But at Orléans he rediscovered in a theatrical form the grandeur that he had lost. And for that he knew how to ruin himself!

  In 1435, at Orléans, he had known how to theatrically magnify the warlike fury that had beaten the English.

  In 1440 he will unite an immense crowd into a different glory, a paradoxical and sinister one: that of the criminal! For this last blaze he will pay with his life. And at the end of these few pages, we ought to at least acknowledge the magnificence that he knew how to deliver.

  A Desperate Attempt: The Appeal to the Devil

  But the prohibition contained in the letters of July 2, 1435, did not have full effect, inasmuch as the Duke of Brittany, Jean V, refused to ratify them in his domain … Yet the situation was no less serious. It was impossible for Rais to follow any course except that to which his disgrace had already led him.

  To tell the truth, as of 1432 he went from one crisis to another. The aberration to which he surrendered in this unfortunate year literally withdrew him from the world. This aberration locked him in a tragic hallucination. Yet he had the feeling of being conveyed by a privileged destiny: finally the prodigy — or the monster — that he was would be saved. Such was his naïveté. I was going to say his stupidity. He had no doubt about his two contradictory recourses, one to God, the other to the Devil. This naive, demonic man never entangled himself in anything; in the pact that he offered to the Devil, he exempted his soul and life. In any case, this privileged man could not have conceived that he would not be riding on everyone else’s belly in the next world as in this one. One day he did manage, in his magnanimity, to ask the poor folk to congregate beside him at the Sacred Altar. This did not alter the exaggerated feeling that he had of himself. Worst of all is his certitude at the trial that he would rejoin Prelati, his accessory and accomplice, in paradise at the very hour the executioner hanged them…10

  In truth, the presumptiousness at the source of all this drama is more generally the basis of that feudal superiority, insolence, and exploitation essential to the nobility.

  The impulse that personifies tragedy can be accounted for by one formula: facing headlong into the impossible! The situation is untenable but it never belies the excessiveness of a Rais, who fights to the finish. This man is threatened with a rapid ruin; ceaselessly, at the limits of remorse, he marches into an abyss; yet for all this, he has an offhand bearing, an incongruous confidence, which makes the catastrophe inevitable.

  Day in and day out, he waits for the Devil, his supreme hope … He awaits him for years. If he admits that he has “since his youth, committed and perpetrated high and enormous crimes,” he thinks, at least partly, of his attempts at conjury. As soon as he could, he conferred with everyone who boasted of a power in these domains.

  We cannot be sure, but one of the first contacts he had with an alleged Hereafter (which fascinated him) could be related to the meeting, doubtlessly at Angers in 1426, with a person about whom we know very little: he was an Angevin and a knight. Rais must have met him before fighting the English under Yolande d’Anjou’s banner, when he recruited a company of Angevin men-at-arms; he was then twenty-two years old (this age corresponds to the expression “since his youth,” which Gilles himself used). Versed in the arts of alchemy and invocation of the Devil, this knight was subsequently imprisoned: the Inquisition accused him of heresy. In the prison at the castle of the Dukes of Anjou, Gilles conversed with him. The knight possessed a manuscript examining the suspect arts; Gilles de Rais borrowed it from him and had it read aloud to several people in a room. We know moreover that the book was returned to the Angevin, but as to what befell the wretch, we know nothing. This visit to the prison and this reading of a manuscript suggest the initial steps. It is logical that at this period Gilles would have stayed for a long time in Angers, “fourteen years” before the trial in 1440.

  At the same time, we must believe Rais’ own affirmations that by 1440 he had practiced the art of conjury for “fourteen years.”

  It is possible in this way to think that his demonic initiation, dating from around 1426, began with this information drawn from a prisoner and a book. Evidently numerous contacts followed, leading to the practices prescribed by professional conjurors.

  As for these invocations, executed for “fourteen years,” the trial informs us that they were sometimes done in the castles at Machecoul and Tiffauges, and sometimes in the house called La Suze at Nantes. There was one or several attempts at Orléans in the house called the Croix d‘Or. The former are the first to be dated; Lord de Rais’ stays in the house of the Croix d’Or at Orléans take place in 1434 and 1435.

  We have, besides, a certain number of details about which conjurors were engaged or about such-and-such precise invocations.

  We’re told the names of a trumpeter named Dumesnil, of a “man named Louis,” and of Antoine de Palerne from Lombardy. They may have been in Lord de Rais’ service rather early on, some of them very early. At these invocations, the majority in which Gilles participated, “as much at Machecoul as at other places,” “a circle” was traced “in the soil … of figure in the form of a circle”; whosoever wanted to conjure the Devil “where the intention is to see the Devil…, to speak and make a pact with him must, in the first place, trace this circle on the ground” … On this subject, Rais himself affirmed elsewhere that he was never able to see the Devil or speak with him, “although he did everything he could, to the point that it was not his fault if he could not see the Devil or speak with him.”

  In particular, we have the circumstantial account of certain invocations. Gilles de Sillé participated in one of them in addition to Lord de Rais. We do not know the name of the conjuror, but it took place in a room in the fortress at Tiffauges, without a doubt quite early on. The circle was traced on the ground, but on this day the two asso
ciates trembled. Rais, who “held in his arms an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” is supposed to have entered the circle filled with apprehension “because the invoker had forbidden him to cross himself, because, if he did, they would all be in great danger; but he remembered a prayer to Our Lady that begins with Alma,11 and at once the conjuror ordered him to leave the circle, which he immediately did while crossing himself; and he left the room promptly, leaving the invoker and locking the door behind him; then he discovered … Sillé, who told him that someone was beating and striking the invoker left alone in the room, which sounded as if someone were beating a featherbed; which he … (Rais) did not hear, and he had the door of the room opened and at its entrance he saw the conjuror wounded in the face and in other parts of his body, and having, among other things, a bump on his forehead so large he could barely stand up; and for fear that he might die in consequence of the said wounds, Gilles wanted him to be confessed and have the sacraments administered, but the conjuror did not die, and recovered from his wounds.” Imitating the noise that a demonic attack might have made and wounding himself to drive the point home, the conjuror is evidently employing a traditional ruse which Rais was the victim of at least twice.

  Besides the excessive reaction of Rais, who earlier on could still be more frightened, there is one reason to believe that the date of this invocation is early: the role that Sillé plays in it and that he plays alone. Until about 1435- 1436, so far as the conjurors and alchemists are concerned, Sillé seems at first to have been Gilles’ sole procurer (during the same period he seems to have been the principal procurer of children, and it is he, as a rule, who did the killing when his master tired of doing so).

  From 1435-1436 on, the priest Eustache Blanchet must have been, in his position, responsible for controlling the conjurors and alchemists (so far as the children are concerned, Henriet and Poitou assume the primary role, but Sillé does not disappear).

  In the first place, Gilles de Rais had charged Sillé with seeking conjurors for him “in the region upriver,” but apparently he had no occasion to be satisfied with them. Sillé reported to him that a female conjuror had told him that if his master did not turn his soul away from the Church, in particular from his chapel at Machecoul, he would succeed in nothing; another one, in different terms, had pretty much told him the same thing. A conjuror, whom he was to bring back, drowned. Another came but, as soon as he arrived, died …

  Eustache Blanchet, who was subsequently expected to return from Italy with the young and prestigious Prelati, does not seem to have made the slightest mistake in the beginning. The conjuror that Blanchet had called in from Poitiers to Pouzauges stole from Lord de Rais. The latter had a castle at Pouzauges which he owned through his wife, like that at Tiffauges. But it is not in the castle that the invocation was performed. It occurred during the night in a forest nearby. Rais, Blanchet, Henriet, and Poitou were present. (Sillé must have been out of favor then.)

  The conjuror, a physician named Jean de La Rivière, entered alone into the woods. He was armed. He had a sword and other arms, and he wore white armor. The participants suddenly heard a loud noise, as if La Rivière were fighting. Blanchet thinks that he was striking his sword against his armor with all his might. Upon his return, he had a “frightened and terrified” air. He said that he had seen in the woods “the Devil in the guise of a leopard.” The demon had passed by him without saying a word, avoiding him. Gilles believed the conjuror without checking.

  He paid him twenty gold royals on the spot. Everyone then returned to Pouzauges, where they held a feast and passed the night. Afterwards, La Rivière said that he was going to look for something he needed and would return as soon as possible, but he kept the twenty gold pieces and no one heard from him again.

  Apparently it was around 1436 that this invocation took place. The business of the goldsmith from Angers might have taken place during the same period. The fact remains that Gilles must have passed through Angers that year. He attacks his ex-tutor there, who had made the mistake of taking sides with his family against him. Gilles could have been staying at the Lion d’Argent then, where Blanchet says he sent a goldsmith who professed to know alchemy. Gilles pays him a silver mark “to work.” But, locking himself in a room, the goldsmith starts drinking. Gilles was indignant when he found him sleeping … He chased him, but the drunkard kept the silver.

  However, the drunkard was perhaps honest as others were not: he was not a conjuror, but an alchemist. And alchemy — which the Church does not persecute as resolutely as sorcery or conjury, which occasionally it even tolerates — is basically the origin of chemistry … A little later, an alchemist in Rais’ service is evidently honest. Like the one from Angers, he is a goldsmith; work with metals was preparation for alchemy, being in accord with it. We do not know when he came to Tiffauges to lodge with Lord de Rais, but he was there on May 14, 1439, when Prelati arrived; Prelati and Blanchet, arriving from Italy, were put in the same room with him on this day. We know just about everything we can say of him from Blanchet’s testimony (p. 218); likewise, we have to think that the latter brought him to Gilles de Rais as he had brought the one from Angers. The second goldsmith was from Paris and answered to the name of Jean Petit.

  He was still in Gilles’ service in December 1439 when his master sent him to Mortagne in order to convince Blanchet, who had just escaped from Tiffauges, to return. But Blanchet refused. He told Jean Petit to repeat to Gilles and Prelati that public rumor was against them, that they ought to renounce their criminal life. When Jean Petit told him, Gilles, beside himself, had him led to the castle of Saint-Étienne-de-Mermorte, where he was thrown in prison; there he “remained a long time,” according to Blanchet. We do not know the date on which he left Gilles’ service, but he must have no longer been in it as of September 15, 1440, the date of the arrest. If on this date he had been at Machecoul, he would have been arrested, as was Prelati, with whom he had shared daily tasks for a long time. Prelati worked with him at the ovens that he evidently had installed before, perhaps even well before, the arrival of the Italian.

  Such other alchemists as the Italians, Antoine de Palerne and Prelati, were not just alchemists but conjurors too. Antoine de Palerne seems to have been in Gilles’ service early on, but he did not remain long; and when Gilles speaks of experiments with mercury, it is probable that Jean Petit was the initiator (the Italians devoted themselves principally to conjury). Gilles was certain of succeeding at the transmutation of metals one day or another with Petit or Prelati, particularly with the both of them; he seriously believed that he was going to make gold. He remained convinced; if the unexpected visit of the future Louis XI, then Viennese Dauphin, had not obliged him to destroy his ovens (because an ordinance by Charles V prohibited alchemy) in December 1439, he would have fabricated gold! He would have regained his colossal fortune, and he would have been in possession of unlimited power and inexhaustible riches!

  Prelati, Final Euphoria, and Catastrophe

  In fact the arrival of François Prelati, whom Blanchet brought back from Florence in the spring of 1439, ended by ruining him. Young, adorned with the marvels of magic, literature, and Italy, Prelati literally seduced Lord de Rais; his actual attainments and his charlatanic eloquence dazzled him.

  Gilles no longer expected anything but the aid of the demon. He received this brilliant man like a savior who seemed to him, as no other, versed in knowledge that was going to return him to his former state of fortune. Insolent, audacious, coming from a city where homosexuality was rampant, Prelati appeared to come marvelously to terms with a master who himself must have seduced the unscrupulous — in addition, prodigiously corrupt — ambitious man. Gilles must have seduced him inasmuch as he continued to generously command a still appreciable wealth despite an actual fall from grace. Treated as a friend, maybe as a lover (though we cannot be certain), François Prelati escalated the number of invocations from the beginning, without concerning himself in the least with the obstinateness of a
devil determined not to show. Easy lies, occasionally clumsy comedies, succeeded in passing off the deceptions. As an earlier conjuror had already done, he resorted to the simulated attack of a demon, and was given credit for having vigorously beaten him in the room in which he had taken the trouble to lock himself. Frightened, imagining his friend already dead, Gilles found him wounded; he intended to take charge of caring for him himself, not letting anyone else approach. But if the devil refused to appear to Gilles, he did not fail to provide François with reasons. In fact, when the latter was alone his personal demon, named Barron, sometimes graced the young and charming charlatan with his presence … It was easy to maintain his master’s terrors and superstitions in this way. The lies of Prelati, in other respects, could demonstrate nothing: there managed to exist between the two men a sort of friendship, evidenced by Gilles’ sublime goodbyes to François at the trial (p. 194), of which we have already spoken. Apparently these wayward souls stopped at nothing … Despite their excessive corruption, it was possible for each of them to have certain sentimental capacities … the imbroglio of their feelings would have been constructed between one’s deceit and the other’s foolishness. We ought to recall no less the scene wherein the young comedian brutally landed a kick on the behind of his landlady who, crying over her dying husband, had disturbed him (p. 161). The kick would have made the miserable woman fall from her ladder if an old nurse had not caught her by the robe … This is the image with which it is appropriate to respond to the emotion that might have been warranted by the goodbyes that, on the threshold of the other world, the monster addressed his mystifier before the judges.